Marriage Problems?

Out of control child?

Anxiety or panic?

Compulsions taking over your life?

Brief Therapy

Individual Therapy

Couple's Counseling

Child & Family Therapy

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Anxiety Robbing you of Peace?

Worry Too Much? Paralyzed By Fear?

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY THERAPY INSTITUTE

LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST | LICENSED MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPIST

Anxiety & Panic Fears, Worry, Phobias

Anxiety is a persistent state of worry, nervousness, or fear that can be experienced as thoughts, emotions, or in physical symptoms. Anxiety can be due to stress, life events, real or imagined threats to our well being, or can be an all-encompassing dread with no obvious causes.

CompulsionsOCD, Habitual Behavior

Traditional obsessive compulsive disorder can be treated effectively and efficiently with our evidenced-based treatment model. Checking, counting, obsessive thinking out of fear is something we can handle! We also treat addictions and pleasure based compulsions like porn addiction.

Marital Issues Communication, Conflict

We provide marriage counseling, relationship counseling, and individual counseling to help with family and social adjustment. We can help with communication skills training, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Turn what divides you into something that unites you.

Child Problems Behavior, Defiance, ADHD

We specialize in treating difficult children and adolescents. Don't let confusing diagnoses like ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and bipolar disorder frighten you. We have specific techniques to help you get back in control and get your child on the right path.

Kill The Snake with its Own Poison

Why Choose Us?

Always Focused on Results

We put a lot of effort on achieving our therapuetic goals of symptom reduction and constructing a better life. Some therapists are just a shoulder to cry on. We don't just want to listen to your problems; we want to solve them.

Value Efficiency & Effectiveness

We are mindful of your time and your money. Our goal is to produce positive change as rapidly as possible. Brief Strategic Therapy is less talk and more action. If we apply ourselves well, we can disrupt the problems in your life and begin constructing a better future.

Self Correcting

We try to solve your problems as quickly as possible. If things aren't working, we can shift strategies to find another solution instead of persisting in what doesn't work. If our methods will not work for your problem, we will know quickly and tell you.

Experienced with Many Problems

We treat a wide variety of problems. Even if your problem isn't listed on our specialties page, chances are that we have treated it. If it is psychological, family, marital, or a life problem, let's see if we can help.

Less Talk, More Action

What is the point of talking if nothing ever changes? Psychotherapy is a talk therapy, but good therapy is more than just a place to share feelings. A skilled therapist will attempt to use the information gleaned in the session to construct interventions to help ameliorate the problem.

Mindful of Your Budget

We avoid wasting time and money. We will try to produce postive results as soon as possible. When the problem is solved, our treatment is complete. There is no endless navel gazing at our clinic. First we define the problem; then we analyze how the problem operates; then we construct interventions that interrupt the problem and produce positive changes.

We're always looking for results. Our techniques are designed to reduce or eliminate symptoms and improve quality of life. We try to accomplish our goals in the briefest time possible, while maintaining quality and permanency of results.

Typical Number of Sessions

Session Length in Minutes

Psychology of Philosophy

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Albert Einstein - Nuggets of Wisdom from the Effendi

We are generally better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those which have come from the mind of others.

Blaise Pascal - Pensees

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Heraclitus - Ancient Greek Philosopher

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

Lao Zi - Ancient Chinese Philosopher

Our Treatment Models

Psychological problems & family problems are resistant to common sense solutions, "solutions" that often even worsen them. It is not enough to know what caused the problems in the first place, because once started, complex problems take on a life of their own, independent of their origins
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Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) is a form of treatment based on the assumption that we are only able to know how a problem persists by actively trying to change it.

BST was pioneered by Giorgio Nardone at the Centro di Terapia Strategica in Italy and Paul Watzlawick at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto.

It's not a lot of talk. It's a lot of action.

When problems become entrenched, they can crowd out hope. Problems can collect more problems until they are all consuming. Focusing on solutions opens up new possibilities and brings a breath of fresh air into stale conditions.

It is counterintuitive and can be difficult to grasp, but sometimes solutions to problems have nothing to do with the original problem. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that produced the problem in the first place.

Solution Focused Therapy can be practiced on its own, or can be naturally incorporated into Brief Strategic Therapy. First focus on solving the problem, then build a new experience beyond it.

Brief Strategic Therapy relies on ancient Chinese & ancient Greek wisdom. The philosophy of old informs us of strategies that can be applied to daily life. The Brief Strategic Therapist uses his knowledge of this philosophical wisdom to craft these strategies into therapeutic interventions. The therapist uses these interventions to interrupt the mechanisms that perpetuate psychological and family problems, and thus allow them to peter out.

What distinguishes truly original minds is not being the first to see something new, but seeing as new what is old, always known, seen and overlooked by all.

Our Staff

We Practice Brief Strategic Therapy

- Brief Strategic Therapy focuses on understanding symptoms and how they function
- Strategies are devised by the therapist to interrupt the way that symptoms are currently functioning
- Interventions that are based on the strategies are given that eliminate the symptoms and produce new results
- As symptoms reduce, treatment is consolidated to stabilize the person beyond the problem